Energy concerns are gripping not only data centers but increasingly the corner offices of large organizations as oil and other energy prices push north of $90-$100/barrel. Large storage suppliers are investing in energy efficiency-based product differentiation. These concerns are real for data centers. A recent EPA study claims that 1.5% of all energy draw in the United States ultimately is consumed by data centers and that without significant adjustments in technology and consumption behavior this figure is likely to increase.

Users face multiple challenges as they try to improve the energy profile of their storage. Storage today accounts for approximately 10%-20% of total energy costs in a data center. More than 50% of energy costs are consumed by the infrastructure that supports equipment -- including cooling, power distribution, and UPS technologies -- all of which vary by IT equipment. Consequently the effect of investments in design, product selection and implementation of more power-efficient storage products will dramatically impact the power consumption of the data center's infrastructure.

We see five action items effecting near-term user positions:

Users and vendors must recognize that the largest contributor to data center energy costs remains the overall design, structure, architecture and location of data centers themselves. Data center environments remain the 800 lb gorilla in all IT energy conversations. Users must plan to use any technology that can improve environments, including liquid cooling, that can reduce that energy use, and the Wikibon community is encouraged that most data center managers are anticipating a return of liquid cooling and other actions.

Users should explore modular storage technologies where they provide an overall better energy footprint than traditional arrays. But any move to take advantage of modular systems must be combined with efforts to better associate applications with performance and capacity requirements as storage decisions are made.

Tape is a green technology and must be a feature of any organization's Tier 3 strategy for it to truly claim to be a green shop.

Users must determine the differential they are willing to pay for green technology and begin expressing their overall green objectives to the industry not only through purchasing but also in their communications about the storage products and product mix they are likely to make on future purchases. We see multiple types of products that will lead to greener storage in the pipeline worldwide. However, these products won't see the light of day soon unless users consistently demonstrate that green is a central feature of ongoing strategies.

Finally, none of this will accomplish anything unless users constantly demonstrate that green values are real and not something to be negated at purchase time in favor of lower cost, less energy-inefficient alternatives.

Action Item: Green storage, like other green initiatives, is more than good citizenship. It will lead to overall operating cost savings in the long run. Near term, IT organizations need to force attention on overall data center design and establish long-term plans for the adoption of green-related technologies, pushing the industry to improve overall product efficiency. Additionally some large vendors of storage technologies have developed competencies for comparing as is and to be implementation options. They should be pressed to provide knowledge of the energy use implications of different configuration alternatives in terms of their overall impact on the greening of the data center, including the impact on the infrastructure that uses more than half of the energy data centers consume.